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VII. CONCLUSION

The Ugandan government must take responsibility for the discrimination and violence so many of its female citizens routinely suffer. Many committed activists and NGOs have long battled to persuade the government to tackle violence against women, to repeal discriminatory marriage and divorce laws, to enact legislation to protect women’s rights in the family, to address the harmful effects of certain traditional practices, and to remedy the dire economic conditions under which so many Ugandan women live. Yet rather than live up to the promise of the Ugandan constitution by making every effort to combat domestic violence, the government equivocates over the enactment of laws, allows discriminatory attitudes to influence its conduct, treats women unequally before the law, and sacrifices beleaguered women in the interest of maintaining the status quo. An institutionalized gender bias pervades the criminal justice system, ensuring that battered women are often left unaided and condemned to continuing abuse. The government is supposed to protect all its citizens. By failing to limit the impunity with which domestic violence occurs, the state implicitly condones and encourages it.

Much of Uganda’s progress in combating HIV/AIDS will be lost if the government continues to ignore the role of domestic violence. The remedies recommended in this report require a re-evaluation of existing policy and strategy and the effective implementation of existing and pending legislation. While this must be accompanied by attempts to modify social attitudes and cultural beliefs relating to women’s rights in marriage, violence against women is ultimately about unequal power relations. It is therefore the government’s responsibility to use legislation, policymaking, and programmatic initiatives to address historical imbalances and inequities, to create an awareness of rights, and to reinforce a positive change in attitudes.

The government should enact new laws or modify existing statutes in order to afford women greater equality before the law, protect women from violence, uphold women’s sexual autonomy, and ultimately minimize women’s vulnerability to HIV infection. The Domestic Relations Bill (Draft) and the Sexual Offences (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill should be enacted without delay. The government should enact domestic violence legislation that, at a minimum, provides for punitive measures to curb domestic violence, and addresses issues of enforcement and compensation. Customary law abuses should be addressed, and the government should support civil society’s efforts to empower women at the rural level. Training in appropriate responses to domestic violence should be provided to police, court officials, and medical officers. The government should support nongovernmental organizations that provide shelters, legal aid, counseling, and medical care to female victims of domestic violence.

The protection of women’s rights must be central to the HIV/AIDS strategies of government and international donors. The Ugandan government should respond to this challenge with all the courage and energy it showed in its initial response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and support a countrywide response to domestic violence and women’s vulnerability to HIV at the highest levels. The government should not use traditional practices or the sanctity of the family to ignore the plight of these women and to abdicate its responsibilities under national and international law. Other regional governments should identify and examine national parallels within their own legislation and/or HIV/AIDS national programming and implement comparable reforms.

In 2000, the Uganda Common Country Assessment of the United Nations Agencies working in Uganda, stated: “The challenge now lies in reawakening public awareness of the seriousness of the AIDS threat, but without stigmatizing people living with HIV. Of all the countries in Africa affected by the HIV pandemic, none is better prepared to meet this challenge than Uganda. However, much still remains to be done to cope with the impact of HIV and to curb its further spread.” This must include a focus on the improvement of the status of women. To do otherwise endangers the lives of Ugandan women, and, ultimately, Uganda’s future.